#After their Hamptons action, the MoneyOut/VotersIn affinity group of Occupy Wall Street released talking points about the Koch Brothers, who were apparently so rattled that they released a set of their own. In them, they call Andy Stephanian, Occupy Wall Street‘s media adviser, a “convicted terrorist” because he was one of the SHAC 7, which campaigned to shut down a notorious animal testing lab only to be sentenced to Gitmo North.

#The Paul Robeson Freedom School summer camp, started by members of Occupy Wall Street and modeled on civil-rights-era Freedom Schools, was profiled in the New York Times.

#On July 11, the NYPD announced that DNA recovered from a bicycle chain at the site of a wildcat fare strike in March had been matched with DNA linked to the unsolved killing of Sarah Fox, a Julliard student whose naked body was discovered in Inwood Hill Park in 2004. The story was sensationalized on the New York Post’s front page and in multiple mainstream media outlets. The next day two anonymous sources from the medical examiner’s office told the New York Times that the DNA likely came from a lab worker who worked on both cases. So where were the retractions? A skimpy three-paragraph article buried in the next day’s Post admitted that the link was a lab error, a far cry from the previous day’s cover splash. The lopsided coverage angered members of Occupy Wall Street, who came to suspect the leak was part of an NYPD smear campaign. While it’s certainly true that the NYPD has no love for the city’s activists, police commissioner Ray Kelly also might have publicized an Occupy/murder link to detract from a report two days earlier that he and Mayor Bloomberg overstated the department’s counterterror successes.

#The same day he pushed an Occupy/murder link, Ray Kelly actually said his racist stop-and-frisk policy is for the black and Latino population’s own good. But the policy may hit judicial roadblocks, as recent rulings by federal and state courts have now cast judges as the most potent critics of the practice.

#Debt is emerging as a connective thread for Occupy organizers and their allies as they begin to build toward the movement’s one-year anniversary, Truthout opines.

#A California appeals court ruled that police officers may be held liable for injuring someone with a pepper ball projectile intended to disperse a crowd. The decision, which stems from a 2004 incident, is a good sign for the U.C. Davis students doused with pepper spray in November, who have sued university police.

#Occupy Fresno joined Members of Faith In Community and Peace Fresno to call for a divestment of accounts with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

#In the early hours of July 10, armed SWAT officers burst through the doors of an apartment belonging to organizers of Occupy Seattle as part of an ongoing investigation into the May Day riots. Phillip Neel, one of the residents of the apartment, spoke about the ordeal.

#San Diego Comic Con International staged an Occupy Comics panel on July 15 featuring David Lloyd, Zoetica Ebb, Susie Cagel and other contributors to the Occupy Comics Anthology.

#A federal court awarded $200,000 to an Orlando activist who was imprisoned for 18 days after scribbling “The revolution will not be televised” and “All I want for Christmas is a revolution” in front of city hall last December.

#An Occupy Eugene member was arrested on July 11 as the group dismantled its latest base at the behest of federal officials who ordered an end to the 10-week demonstration outside the Federal Building. “Brave Beatrice,” a.k.a. Emily Semple, 58, said she never thought she’d want to get arrested. “But this is important,” she said. “There’s no way that I’m not going to stand up for my First Amendment rights.”

#The Oakland City Council voted unanimously to end its relationship with Goldman Sachs if it did not terminate an interest rate swap deal the city entered into with the investment behemoth back in 1997. If Goldman refuses, the city council will enlist the Stop Goldman Sachs Coalition, a group with members affiliated withOccupy Wall Street.

#Occupy Marinhas taken up the cause of a Mill Valley couple who are trying to avoid being evicted from the home they lost to foreclosure. Patricia Goff, 60, was in a serious car accident and has been unable to work, and she and her husband face eviction by Wells Fargo.

#Occupy Wall Street#occupied the Allen and Company retreat for media and tech moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 12, laying down on the sidewalk near the town’s duck pond where Google co-founder Sergey Brin and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg were enjoying lunch.

#One week after nearly 700 nurses, nurse assistants and laundry, dietary and housekeeping staff began walking the picket lines at five HealthBridge nursing homes in a strike over unfair labor practices, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman came out to join them.

#In a settlement negotiated by the ACLU, Occupy Delawareagreed to temporarily suspend its occupation of Wilmington’s Spencer Plaza in September to make way for a much-needed $1.2 million renovation. The group has maintained the longest-lasting Occupy Wall Street-inspired tent occupation in the nation despite freezing weather, violent storms, blistering heat, the hazards of night and attempts by the city to renege on agreements.

#Occupy Tampamet with the West Tampa Community Development Corporation to discuss claims that the encampment in the privately-owned Voice of Freedom Park on Main Street is tarnishing the city’s image. But in fact, some residents said it wasn’t until Occupy Tampa fully inhabited the park seven months ago that they finally felt empowered to use it.

#Occupy Knoxville activist Paul Jacobs penned an editorial in the Knoxville News Sentinel urging his overwhelmingly conservative neighbors to recognize that “we live in a closed system of control, designed so that we find a wall any way we turn,” and “another world is possible.”

#Some of the nation’s largest corporations — General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies and Oracle — cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade while hiring 2.4 million people overseas.

#A federal judge upheld two Springfield, Massachusetts, anti-foreclosure ordinances, ruling against six regional banks that sought to overturn the regulations.

#Major websites and human rights advocates criticized a proposed law that would grant the Russian government broad new powers to restrict online content, supposedly to protect children from pornography and other harmful material. Critics said the law could quickly lead to repression of speech and a restrictive firewall like the one in China.

#A peaceful march in support of the Asturian miners in Madrid led to violence when police evicted the crowd.

#Spanish civil servants, many dressed in mourning black, took to the streets July 13 in angry protest as the government approved new sweeping austerity measures that include wage cuts and tax increases for a country struggling under a recession and an unemployment rate of 25 percent.

#To show solidarity with the Occupy Movement, Iran hosted the International Wall Street Downfall Cartoon Festival.

#A march to protest the declared winner of the July 1 presidential election drew 5,000 to Mexico City on July 14. The protesters – a mix of students, adults and families – marched from the Angel of Independence monument to the Zocalo, Mexico City’s largest plaza.

#Indians braved the rain-slicked streets of Guwahati to protest for rights and protections for women, bolstered by the recent molestation of a young girl and an attack on a female member of the legislative assembly. The culprits remain free in both cases, and the government “has failed miserably” in tackling the issue, an advocate said.

#Radical Islamists in northern Mali briefly detained about 90 protesters and whipped them in an apparent attempt to intimidate the locals.

#While once estimated to be anywhere from $2 billion to $9 billion, the final cost of JPMorgan Chase’s risky hedge was reported to be $5.8 billion.

#In the wake of the Libor scandal, the Justice Department’s criminal division is building cases against several financial institutions and their employees, including traders at Barclays. The Federal Reserve knew of the rate rigging scandal as far back as 2007 and did nothing to stop it. ZeroHedge illuminated the many ways banks commit criminal fraud.

#Visa, MasterCard and major banks agreed to pay retailers at least $6 billion to settle a long-running lawsuit for conspiring to fix the fees that stores pay to accept credit cards. As part of the settlement, stores from Rite Aid to Kroger will be allowed to charge customers more if they pay using a credit card.

#Wells Fargo will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws.

#A range of Facebook users, from political dissidents to technology bloggers, are reporting the sudden blocking of their pages.

#The next strategic and tactical step in the Medicare For All movement is divestment from private health insurance, TIAA-CREF said.

#A new survey by law firm Labaton Sucharow LLP, which looks to work with potential whistleblowers to help SEC investigations, found 26% of financial employees in the U.S. and U.K. surveyed had firsthand knowledge of “wrongdoing in the workplace.” 16% of those surveyed said they would engage in insider trading if they could make $10 million and not get caught, and 24% believed rules “may have to be broken in order to be successful.”

#In a misguided solution to the threat of voter disenfranchisement in Florida, the Department of Homeland Security has granted state election officials access to a database of noncitizen residents for use in Republican-backed efforts to remove people who are not American citizens from voter registration rolls. The decision came after efforts by the Obama administration to block access.

#Occupy the Film Festival will bring together the most compelling and innovative films of the movement on September 15 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

#Occupy groups from Santa Rosa, San Francisco, Portland, Sebastopol and Petaluma are joining twenty other social justice activist organizations to protest the powerful 1% elites partying at the secretive Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California, from July 14 to 29.

#According to Occupy Arrests, there have been 7,360 arrests in 116 cities since September 17.
~~

by Robert Faturechi and Derek Willis A group that gave more money to one of President-elect Trump’s fundraising efforts than any other political action committee failed to disclose its donors before Election Day and exceeded caps on contribution amounts. America Comes First PAC was created in early August. But for the next three months, it disclosed nothing […]

by Kyra Gurney, Anjali Tsui, David Iaconangelo, Selina Cheng, This report is a collaboration between ProPublica and the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University. A version of this story is being co-published with The Miami Herald. Wealthy politicians and businessmen suspected of corruption in their native lands are fleeing to a safe […]

by Patrick G. Lee This story was co-published with Mother Jones. Since 2015, California has issued about 800,000 licenses to drivers who lack proof of legal residence. In Illinois, more than 212,000 people have received what are known as temporary visitor driver’s licenses. Connecticut has approved around 26,600 drive only licenses for undocumented immigrant […]

One of the things I’ve had occasion to notice, over the course of the decade or so I’ve put into writing these online essays, is the extent to which repeating patterns in contemporary life go unnoticed by the people who are experiencing them. I’m not talking here about the great cycles of history, which take long enough to roll over that a certain amount of […]

I have a bone to pick with the Washington Post. A few days back, as some of my readers may be aware, it published a list of some two hundred blogs that it claimed were circulating Russian propaganda, and I was disappointed to find that The Archdruid Report didn’t make the cut. Oh, granted, I don’t wait each week for secret orders from Boris Badenov, the mock […]

In a year that saw the death of singer Prince, GQ's Chris Heath spoke with several people who knew him to get their stories about the legendary artist. One story in particular stands out, and it references the singer's Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs (without explicitly saying that).

Fox News propagandist Todd Starnes' latest headline claims that a Texas school censored a poster featuring a scene from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," arguing that this is political correctness run amok. As usual, the facts don't back him up.

A Christian charity that offers low-priced Christmas gifts to families that can't afford anything else refused to take donations collected at a local bar, because they didn't want to have any ties with alcohol.

Multiple conservative Christian groups are calling for a boycott of Highlights, the magazine for kids, because the editors plan to feature gay and lesbian couples on their pages the same way they do straight couples. And treating those people as human beings goes against everything these Christian groups stand for.

“If prayer actually worked, everyone would be a millionaire, nobody would ever get sick and die, and both football teams would always win.” –Ethan Winer The phrase “nothing fails like prayer” was coined in 1976 by secular activist, Ann Nicol … Continue reading →

The Bible makes some rather bold claims about prayer. How well do they hold up? (Part 1 of a 4 part series). Does prayer—like it’s taught in biblical Christianity–actually work? That all depends on what you’re looking for. Prayer can … Continue reading →

By Adi Chowdhury What is the Internet? Is the Web a tool? A hindrance? An impediment? A propeller of anti-social behavior? A path towards enhanced freedom and justice? An educator? Something we should further develop? Something we should repress? Something we should be worried about? As the administrator and author, I would like to… Continue reading Demons […]

By Adi Chowdhury Last Sunday, the 30th of October, was probably a regular day for most of us. Our day proceeded as usual, as we left our homes for work or school and returned home tired, only to dine well and drift off to sleep peacefully. On the other side of the story, last… Continue reading Injustice and Agony for Religious Minorities in Bangladesh

Christians' weird way of engaging with virginity is a big problem in their culture, as well as a sign of something seriously wrong at its core. Some recent events have reminded me anew of that dysfunction.The post T’is the Season: Virgin Births. appeared first on Roll to Disbelieve.

Bill Schnoebelen is one such storyteller. Once a popular figure in fundagelical Christianity, his narrative long ago lost its cachet. He's had to reinvent himself--but is finding that once someone's joined the Cult of Before Stories, that's really hard to do.The post The Cult of Before Stories: Desperate for Relevance. appeared first on Roll t […]

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body. Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” —Ecclesiastes Secularists like me became legitimately concerned when we first learned that our new president-elect selected billionaire right-wing megadonor Betsy DeVos to [Rea […]

Do you find it frustrating to talk to religious people about their beliefs? Nonreligious people often have a hard time understanding their devout counterparts, so they engage them in the kinds of conversations that are meant to tease out the intellectual nuances in what they believe in order to better understand them. It doesn’t take [Read More...]The post T […]

written by Jeffrey Tayler The first woman in a hijab to anchor a television news broadcast! To dance as a ballerina! To fence in the Olympics! To — cue for gasps at the sheer progressive splendor of the moment — pose in Playboy! Headlines proclaiming such “firsts” — performed by Muslim women living, nota bene, in the United States and Canada — have appear […]

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with journalist James Kirchick about the coming Trump presidency, liberalism vs illiberalism, fake news, Russia, Syria, Iran, and the future of American power. James Kirchick is a journalist and foreign correspondent currently based in Washington. He has reported from Southern and North Africa, the […]

In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with computer scientist Stuart Russell about the challenge of building artificial intelligence that is compatible with human well-being.Stuart Russell is a Professor of Computer Science and Smith-Zadeh Professor in Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological […]

Seneca wrote his 20-sections On the Shortness of Life in 49 CE, the year he returned to Rome from his exile in Corsica, as a moral essay addressed to his friend Paulinus. It begins: “The majority of mortals, Paulinus, complain bitterly of the spitefulness of Nature, because we are born for a brief span of … Continue reading Seneca: on the shortness of life […]

A few months ago I went to the wonderful Brooklyn Academic of Music to see a modern rendition (actually, multiple versions) of the story of Phaedra. It was, as is often the case with BAM’s “Next Wave” festival, a strange play, and not necessarily an improvement on the original, by the Greek dramatist Euripides. Interestingly, Seneca … Continue reading Seneca […]

By Karen L. Garst -- The Faithless Feminist ~ The Biblical Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew Name for God the Father. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Unless you are Jewish or took a course in religion during your lifetime, you may not even know what the letters YHWH stand for. No worries. It is the name of God written in Hebrew in the Torah or, as Christians call it, the […]

(or "Christmas gift ideas for the skeptic on your list"!) By Tania K ~ Up until a few years ago, I thought that I would always wear the "Christian" label. I never doubted that all the components of my religious faith would be a huge part of my life until, well, the Lord called me Home. When that faith began slipping away from me, my world […]

As species struggle to move to adapt to climate change, many are disappearing from the warmest parts of their usual range, research shows. By Sabrina Shankman Hundreds of species around the world—plants, animals, marine life—are experiencing local extinctions due to climate change, according to a new study. Researchers say it's likely to be just the beg […]

As Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt vigorously fought the EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard, which Donald Trump supported in his campaign. By Georgina Gustin During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to pick a leader for the Environmental Protection Agency who would be friendly to agricultural interests, once even saying he would appoin […]

There is NO EVIDENCE that the Bible is from or inspired by a God, or that either of these two man-made biblical scriptures -- foundational to Christianism -- is true: Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave is only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." NONE.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. ~Thomas Shelby

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

Religion Divides

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books of the Freethinkers Bible

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We are a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of the economic crisis, poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into public ownership under democratic control to end the ruling elites’ global competition for profits and power.

We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.

We are for democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman